Our story
Four decades managing Southern California commercial real estate
Tim Collins opened T.C. Collins & Associates in Newport Beach in 1987. He had spent the previous stretch of his career representing owners of industrial buildings, the kind of properties Southern California was building faster than anyone could keep up with. He had watched a pattern repeat: an owner would hire one firm to broker a lease, another to manage the building, a third to consult on the next acquisition, and none of them would talk to each other. The owner did the coordinating. Tim thought the owner deserved better.
Four decades later, the firm is still in Newport Beach. Still family-owned. Still built around the same idea: an owner should be able to walk one door and get every service a commercial property needs, across the entire life of that property, from people who know the building and know the owner.
1987 — Founding
The first office was small. The first clients were owners we already knew — industrial-building owners in Orange County who wanted representation from someone who would answer the phone. There were no dashboards, no franchise brand, no national headquarters. There was Tim, and there was a promise: your building, our attention.
We took on our first named client relationship in that first year. Some of the relationships that started before 1990 are still on our roster today. That is not marketing — it is the reason we still work this way.
The 90s and 2000s — Growth
Southern California kept building. We kept adding services. Property management grew alongside asset management because owners kept asking for both. Real estate advisory grew because our management clients kept coming back for the next acquisition. Development consulting grew because a client would call us in when the next-door parcel came up and ask whether it was worth pursuing.
By the mid-2000s, five services were running under one roof. We did not plan a five-service firm. We built it one client relationship at a time — every service was a request before it was a line item.
The family transition
Around the same stretch, the family began joining the firm. It was not a succession plan in the corporate-governance sense; it was children who grew up around the business and decided to stay in it. Erin Kennedy joined and now runs asset and property management. Cassandra Grierson runs project work. The second generation of the Collins family — CJ — is on the team now too.
That family transition is what makes us credible when we say we manage property for owners who are planning for the next generation. We are doing the same thing on our end of the phone call.
Today — 5 services, one firm
Today T.C. Collins & Associates manages Southern California commercial real estate — industrial properties, refrigerated and cold storage, office, corporate campuses, and business parks — across Orange County and Los Angeles. Five services still under one roof: property & asset management, leasing & tenant representation, acquisitions & due diligence, development & capital projects, and cold storage & food-related real estate.
We still work with families that hold assets for the long term. We still work with institutional owners who need reporting to their boards. We still work on cold-storage compliance for the tenants who have been in those buildings since the Guardian portfolio days. And we still work on new construction — as we did on the Catalina Island Conservancy Trailhead, at Harvey Mudd, at Big Canyon, and at the Rose Gardens.
What's next
The next chapter of the firm is not about becoming a national brand. It is about staying local, staying principal-led, and continuing to be the firm that a Southern California commercial property owner can call once — for anything a property needs.
If your family owns commercial real estate and you are thinking about the next 20 or 30 years of that portfolio, we are built for that conversation.
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